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Joan Baez on her new album: “Seeing beyond this one is hard”

Sam Richards
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Joan Baez on her new album: “Seeing beyond this one is hard”
Joan Baez has hinted that her forthcoming album, Whistle Down The Wind, may be her last. Talking exclusively in the current issue of Uncut, the 77-year-old says that, "At the moment, seeing beyond this one is hard to do. Mostly because it's gets harder and harder to sing... I can still manage it i...

Joan Baez has hinted that her forthcoming album, Whistle Down The Wind, may be her last.

Talking exclusively in the current issue of Uncut, the 77-year-old says that, “At the moment, seeing beyond this one is hard to do. Mostly because it’s gets harder and harder to sing… I can still manage it in a lower range but it’s not easy.”

However, her friend and collaborator Steve Earle is sceptical: “I don’t believe her. Not for one second. She’s going to outlive all of us.”

In the same article, Baez takes about how she survived the 60s, touching on her relationship with Bob Dylan and why she never would have married him. “I was afraid of him… for a while. When things got crazy. In the beginning, we had a lot of fun.”

Baez also tells a story about the time she turned down John Lennon: “About four o’clock in the morning, John tumbled in, and it was like he felt compelled to make some sort of overture to me… I said to him, ‘John, you are probably as beat as I am. I’m not up for it, either’. He looked so relieved.”

Elsewhere in the issue, there are new interviews with My Bloody Valentine, Stick In The Wheel, Gary Numan, Jethro Tull and many more and we also look back on the rise of progressive country in 70s Austin, Texas. Our free 15 track-CD features 15 classic tracks from the edge of sound, including the Valentines, Cabaret Voltaire, Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band, Flying Saucer Attack and Mogwai, to accompany our rundown of Rock’s 50 Most Extreme Albums – from Lou Reed to Ty Segall.

The new Uncut is in shops now – or you can order online now!

The 4th Uncut new music playlist of 2018

Michael Bonner
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The 4th Uncut new music playlist of 2018
Afternoon! Lots of good stuff here, I think. Please find new tracks from Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Wooden Shjips and Julian Casablancas; blues from Ben Harper and Charlie Musselwhite; a longish diversion into electronica courtesy of Hirotaka Shirotsubaki + Sleepland, Eric Chenaux and Fever Ray. What...

Afternoon! Lots of good stuff here, I think. Please find new tracks from Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Wooden Shjips and Julian Casablancas; blues from Ben Harper and Charlie Musselwhite; a longish diversion into electronica courtesy of Hirotaka Shirotsubaki + Sleepland, Eric Chenaux and Fever Ray. What else? Kali Uchis mighty hook-up with Bootsy Collins and Tyler The Creator, more Jack White and some fine post-rock from Oneida.

It also behoves me to remind you of the excellent magazines we’ve produced recently. There’s our current issue featuring My Bloody Valentine, Joan Baez and more while earlier this week we debuted our Ultimate Genre Guide to Glam. And our latest Ultimate Music Guide pays tribute to Tom Petty.

Follow me on Twitter @MichaelBonner

1.
Unknown Mortal Orchestra
“American Guilt”
(Jagjaguwar)

2.
Kali Uchis
“After The Storm” feat. Bootsy Collins and Tyler The Creator
(Virgin)

3.
Wooden Shjips
“Staring At The Sun”
(Thrill Jockey)

4.
Amaya Laucirica
“All Of Our Time”
(Opposite Number)

5.
Mélissa Laveaux
“Nan Fon Bwa”
(Nø Førmat!)

6.
JD McPherson
“Lucky Penny”
(New West Records)

7.
Virginia Wing and Xam Duo
“Person To Person”
(Fire)

8.
Fever Ray
“Part V: Wanna Slip”
(Rabid Records)

9.
Ben Harper and Charlie Musselwhite
“No Mercy In This Land”
(Anti-)

10.
Hirotaka Shirotsubaki + Sleepland
“at a preserve”
(Bandcamp)

11.
The Voidz
“Leave It In My Dreams”
(RCA)

12.
The Beat Escape
“Sign Of Age”
(Bella Union)

13.
Eric Chenaux
“Wild Moon”
(Constellation)

14.
Oneida
“All In Due Time”
(Joyful Noise Recordings)

15.
Jack White
“Corporation”
(Third Man)

The March 2018 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – with My Bloody Valentine and Rock’s 50 Most Extreme Albums on the cover. Elsewhere in the issue, there are new interviews with Joan Baez, Stick In The Wheel, Gary Numan, Jethro Tull and many more and we also look back on the rise of progressive country in 70s’ Austin, Texas. Our free 15 track-CD features 15 classic tracks from the edge of sound, including My Bloody Valentine, Cabaret Voltaire, Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band, Flying Saucer Attack and Mogwai.

Suede’s self-titled debut to be reissued as a deluxe 4xCD set

Sam Richards
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Suede’s self-titled debut to be reissued as a deluxe 4xCD set
To celebrate the 25th anniversary of its release on March 30, Suede will reissue their momentous debut album as a deluxe 4xCD + DVD 'Silver Edition' bookset. The original album now comes accompanied by B-sides, demos, radio sessions and live tracks, plus a DVD featuring TV appearances and a track-b...

To celebrate the 25th anniversary of its release on March 30, Suede will reissue their momentous debut album as a deluxe 4xCD + DVD ‘Silver Edition’ bookset.

The original album now comes accompanied by B-sides, demos, radio sessions and live tracks, plus a DVD featuring TV appearances and a track-by-track dissection of the album with Brett Anderson and Bernard Butler. The package also features handwritten lyric drafts and unseen photos.

The full tracklisting is as follows:

CD 1: SUEDE

1. So Young
2. Animal Nitrate
3. She’s Not Dead
4. Moving
5. Pantomime Horse
6. The Drowners
7. Sleeping Pills
8. Breakdown
9. Metal Mickey
10. Animal Lover
11. The Next Life

CD 2: THE B-SIDES

1. My Insatiable One
2. To The Birds
3. He’s Dead
4. Where The Pigs Don’t Fly
5. Painted People
6. The Big Time
7. High Rising
8. Dolly
9. My Insatiable One [piano version]
10. Brass In Pocket

CD 3: DEMOS, MONITOR MIXES, BBC RADIO 1 SESSION

ROCKING HORSE DEMOS, October 1991
1. The Drowners
2. He’s Dead
3. Moving
4. To The Birds

ISLAND DEMOS, January 1992
5. Metal Mickey
6. Pantomime Horse
7. High Wire (My Insatiable One)*
8. The Drowners*
9. To The Birds*

EAST WEST DEMO, March 1992
10. Sleeping Pills

SINGLE MONITOR MIXES, March 1992
11. The Drowners*
12. To The Birds*
13. My Insatiable One*

BBC RADIO 1, MARK GOODIER SHOW, April 1992
14. Metal Mickey*
15. The Drowners*
16. Sleeping Pills*
17. Moving*

BONUS TRACKS
18. Diesel [instrumental] [studio outtake]
19. Stars On 45 [rehearsal room recording]
20. Sleeping Pills [strings]

CD 4: LIVE AT THE LEADMILL, February 1993 (first time on CD)

1. Metal Mickey
2. Moving
3. My Insatiable One
4. Animal Nitrate
5. Pantomime Horse
6. The Drowners
7. Painted People
8. So Young
9. Animal Lover
10. Sleeping Pills
11. To The Birds

DVD

BBC TV APPEARANCES
THE LATE SHOW [7.5.92]
1. The Drowners*

TOP OF THE POPS [24.9.92 & 27.5.93]
2. Metal Mickey*
3. So Young*

LATER WITH JOOLS HOLLAND [4.6.93]
4. So Young*
5. The Next Life / Brett in conversation with Jools*
6. My Insatiable One*

BONUS DVD FEATURE

Brett Anderson and Bernard Butler discuss Suede, track-by-track, with Pete Paphides*

*previously unreleased

You can pre-order the Suede ‘Silver Edition’ bookset here.

The March 2018 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – with My Bloody Valentine and Rock’s 50 Most Extreme Albums on the cover. Elsewhere in the issue, there are new interviews with Joan Baez, Stick In The Wheel, Gary Numan, Jethro Tull and many more and we also look back on the rise of progressive country in 70s’ Austin, Texas. Our free 15 track-CD features 15 classic tracks from the edge of sound, including My Bloody Valentine, Cabaret Voltaire, Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band, Flying Saucer Attack and Mogwai.

Neil Young plans next archive releases

Sam Richards
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Neil Young plans next archive releases
Neil Young has used the first issue of his latest online newsletter, the Neil Young Archives Times-Contrarian, to tease the upcoming release of two live albums. Roxy: Tonight's The Night Live was taped during a short run of shows at LA's Roxy venue in 1973, just after Young and his band at the time...

Neil Young has used the first issue of his latest online newsletter, the Neil Young Archives Times-Contrarian, to tease the upcoming release of two live albums.

Roxy: Tonight’s The Night Live was taped during a short run of shows at LA’s Roxy venue in 1973, just after Young and his band at the time (Billy Talbot, Nils Lofgren, Ralph Molina and Ben Keith AKA The Santa Monica Flyers) had recorded Tonight’s The Night.

“We really knew the Tonight’s The Night songs after playing them for a month,” writes Young, “so we just played them again, the album, top to bottom, without the added songs, two sets a night, for a few days. We had a great time.”

Alchemy is a Crazy Horse live album and video of the band’s 2012/3 world tour.

“For me, Alchemy harkens back to the best of Live Rust and Weld, beginning to look like a circle… but not totally joined,” writes Young. “Time shows us what we can do and when we can do it. Crazy Horse moves with the wind.”

He adds that Alchemy‘s release is “imminent” while Roxy: Tonight’s The Night Live “should be ready in time for a March release”, with a track streaming on the Neil Young Archives site soon.

The March 2018 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – with My Bloody Valentine and Rock’s 50 Most Extreme Albums on the cover. Elsewhere in the issue, there are new interviews with Joan Baez, Stick In The Wheel, Gary Numan, Jethro Tull and many more and we also look back on the rise of progressive country in 70s’ Austin, Texas. Our free 15 track-CD features 15 classic tracks from the edge of sound, including My Bloody Valentine, Cabaret Voltaire, Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band, Flying Saucer Attack and Mogwai.

Mark E Smith 1957-2018

John Robinson
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Mark E Smith 1957-2018
It is some point in the autumn of 1997, and my interview with Mark E Smith seems to be veering off track. This meeting has been arranged so the NME can discuss with Mark The Fall’s new single but also – covertly – to cue him up, if anyone didn’t already know him as such, as a person of Godli...

It is some point in the autumn of 1997, and my interview with Mark E Smith seems to be veering off track. This meeting has been arranged so the NME can discuss with Mark The Fall’s new single but also – covertly – to cue him up, if anyone didn’t already know him as such, as a person of Godlike Genius – a title which he will shortly be awarded at an NME awards ceremony.

After some introductory chat about the new record, I clearly feel emboldened enough to try and steer Mark to speak about some of his classic work, and his reputation. He drills his bands hard, records prolifically, and tours relentlessly. I therefore put it to him that he is the hardest working man in showbusiness, which is not as it turns out, the smartest move.

“Don’t think you’re talking to Paul Weller or somebody,” he says suddenly. “You’re not talking to…” He looks for the correct pejorative. “…Paul Heaton.” He also makes a couple of remarks about what I look like and what I’m wearing, which at the time possibly obscures for me the point he’s trying to make.

Namely, that it would be a grave mistake to consider him a caricature, someone who – as he sees it, like Weller and Heaton – is imprisoned by how they are perceived.

At that time, it would possibly have been easier to try and report on the received opinion of Mark Smith. The one who would without fail ask you if you were “courting” at present. That, though, would have been to miss the point completely. His leadership of The Fall created genuinely visionary music, the work of someone going completely their own way. Mark E Smith and The Fall were always moving on – the past had less interest for him even than it did for David Bowie.

Their work yielded intermittent moments of genius afterwards, but for ten years between 1980 and 1990 The Fall reliably delivered everything from psychedelic sound art to shiny social reportage, recognizable as the work of one group solely because of the unifying power of Smith’s vernacular prose.

That day I asked him for an exegesis of “My New House”, a Fall number from their mighty 1985 album This Nation’s Saving Grace. Mark touched his nose conspiratorially – that was something he would be keeping to himself.

That vaguely enigmatic fog somehow felt key to what Smith and The Fall did. His best work didn’t deal in fantasies, but effortlessly processed the world to leave it with the magic of an espionage story – codes and aliases, locked doors, missing pieces.

He encouraged the same curiosity in his listeners that he had for the world around him. You uncovered meanings and references, and entered a multi-layered world of altered perceptions. Drugs at one time were involved, but so equally were ghosts, music concrete, soul and German rock.

Talking with fellow NME people about The Fall at the time, it proved tough to pinpoint the definitive Fall album, but there was some consensus on how you could encapsulate the genius of Smith and the Fall in one verse. If you needed to make a point, you could direct someone to innocent, disorientating delight of this, from 1983’s “Wings”: “Purchased a pair of flabby wings/Took to doing some hovering/This is a list of incorrect things…”

I don’t think that the mission to extract thoughts and reminiscences on the genius of The Fall went especially well that afternoon, the interview not so much ending as blurring into a more informal chat as other Fall members came and went.

What emerged instead was a picture of someone who, whether out of wit, perversity, erudition, politeness or boredom simply effortlessly evaded every format. Mark didn’t talk about the past, but mentioned that he wrote short stories in the vein of Edgar Allen Poe. When the photographer apologized for turning up late due to problems at Waterloo, he slyly asked, “What? In Belgium?”. When after this chat we met in a pub weeks later, he remembered my name.

I spoke with Mark on a few other occasions, and little about this capacity to surprise had changed. The last time we met was for an Uncut interview where he was set to answer reader/celebrity questions. We met in the bar of a swanky hotel in the centre of Manchester. After answering a question from Peter Hook, he went briefly missing.

When he turned up, he signed a record for my friend, and we went to a nearby pub for an hour before my train left. Unlike any other person I’ve ever interviewed, he asked me questions about myself, as if he were not Mark E Smith at all, and was happier to shift the focus.

As we finished our drinks, a couple of 30something locals approached our table and introduced themselves. They thanked him for all the music.

Mark stood up and changed the subject. “All right then, lads,” he said, shaking hands with them. “Where are you off to, then?”

The March 2018 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – with My Bloody Valentine and Rock’s 50 Most Extreme Albums on the cover. Elsewhere in the issue, there are new interviews with Joan Baez, Stick In The Wheel, Gary Numan, Jethro Tull and many more and we also look back on the rise of progressive country in 70s’ Austin, Texas. Our free 15 track-CD features 15 classic tracks from the edge of sound, including My Bloody Valentine, Cabaret Voltaire, Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band, Flying Saucer Attack and Mogwai.

Mark E Smith’s final Uncut interview: “The Fall is like a Nazi organisation…”

Tom Pinnock
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Mark E Smith’s final Uncut interview: “The Fall is like a Nazi organisation…”
A quiet drink with MARK E SMITH in his favourite Manchester pub. There are lengthy ruminations on the current Fall lineup’s excellence, and even lengthier ones on the incompetence of their predecessors. Also: the Vorticists, the BBC, Jane Austen, and the problems with Welsh people… “Come on, M...

I wanted to ask about Brix & The Extricated. It must be annoying for you that they’re playing old Fall stuff.
I’m still on the case with it. But they’ve been doing their new material lately. It annoyed me about a year ago, but not anymore. I’m glad you asked, ’cos people keep saying, ‘Give it up,’ but there was a genuine conspiracy there which nobody would believe. I knew it.

What kind of conspiracy?
They were delusional. It can only be proved by the fucking… it’s what I was saying, there are people who retire for 20 years and think they can just come back into it. The best bit was when Paul Hanley was on The Chase.

With Bradley Walsh?
[smiles] Bradley Walsh… He said, “What do you do, Paul?” He goes, “I used to drum for The Fall, but I’ve been an IT operator for 25 years. I’m doing an English Lit degree with another ex-member of The Fall.” And Bradley Walsh goes, “They’re still going, aren’t they?” [pauses] He went out the first fucking round. Who does an English degree with another ex-member of The Fall?! For a fella who was in the group for two years, it is very weird. Now they’re doing all whats-her-face’s material. I don’t gloat, ’cos it was serious at one point.

Does it make you think about playing more from older Fall albums?
Haha! [A man comes over, shakes Smith’s hand and offers him a drink. MES firmly but politely turns it down, then turns to Uncut wide-eyed] He’s another one. He’s the roadie for the Extricated.

That’s a bit weird.
He used to have really long hair. He was a roadie for The Fall about fucking 1999. I knew we should have moved on [to another pub]. Word’s got out, that’s how sad they are. Go on.

I guess it’s a compliment that the Extricated are playing old Fall…
[sharply] No, it’s not a fucking compliment. I would have gladly fucking exterminated them. My side of the story is so fucking truthful. The thing about me is I can remember everything. Everything in them books… when Brix was going on about the flat in Prestwich [in her 2016 book The Rise, The Fall, And The Rise], how it had no shower – people in Manchester do read that and think it’s hilarious, they don’t side with her. Who in Manchester, in any fucking flat of a 23-year-old person in the ’80s, had a shower? I mean, that fucking Steve Hanley’s book [2014’s The Big Midweek], it’s like the fucking memoirs of a psychopath. I can’t read it, it’s so funny. His new girlfriend who’s the co-writer, she’s met him at a Foxes gig, in the dressing room…

Foxes? [The pair met at a Fleet Foxes show]
The Fall is like a Nazi organisation, I’ve got my working-class people, they tell me everything. So I know it all. I knew by reading his book that her favourite book is Jane Austen, Mansfield Park… He’s fucking describing how we did a tour in France, and we’re at the fucking Port Of Calais – [Hanley says] we’ve booked the ferry, and we ran out of petrol a mile from the port. He said that I got out and got a fucking bus to the Port Of Calais – that’s impossible! And then they pushed the van, all five of ’em, from nowhere to the Port Of Calais. It’s straight out of Jane Austen! And I was waiting for them “red-faced” on the dock. “There we met Smith, shouting…” I mean, who would write that? So they said, “Can we have something to eat?” “‘You might as well, seeing as the next ferry isn’t for hours,’ Smith said, red-faced. So we went to the canteen.”

__________________________

Despite the dissenting voices of former Fall members, Mark E Smith’s versions of events certainly seem plausible when he’s explained them in person. After all, the most prominent ex-members of the band can sometimes seem strangely preoccupied with a man they often portray as beastly. But perhaps Uncut’s willingness to believe Smith is just down to his still-powerful charisma; as The Fall’s cult leader, he remains seemingly all-seeing, all-knowing and all-remembering. So come on, Mark, are you really that horrible?

“We’re talking about six strapping 20-year-old lads with muscles there,” he laughs, suggesting they wouldn’t need to ask his permission to eat. “Where do these things come from?! And [Hanley writes] about how I made his child bring speed to Ireland. Nobody’s got that far in the book, nobody! We played Ireland, and his 11-year-old wanted to go to Dublin, so I said he could only come – [laughs] it’s like Mansfield Park! – he could only come if he loaded his pockets with speed and got on the plane on his own from Manchester. I mean, Penguin wouldn’t pass that nonsense!”

One more apocryphal tale to file alongside the others, perhaps: of verbal and physical violence, of Smith sacking a soundman for eating a salad (“the final straw,” he once explained), pouring a pint of beer over the head of a tourbus driver mid-journey, and generally controlling his band as firmly as some tyrannical despot. Whether it’s true or not, does all this stuff not add to the myth?

“Not particularly, no,” says Smith. “I know what you’re saying. You can’t rewrite history, my group have been with me longer and are fucking 18 times better than any of that crap were. They weren’t very good. It’s all right saying ‘Gross Chapel’ [was good], but it was hard work pulling them through that. What they also don’t know is the amount of hours I spent cleaning up their music with John Leckie and people like that. They actually think they played like that on the records. The amount of times John Leckie would get another musician in… I would never hurt them like that at the time, to say.”

As he’s been discussing The Fall’s many ex-members, Smith has been gradually shuffling along the long bench in the pub’s back room. He ends up practically at the next table. “In their own heads,” he says, “Mark’s just the drunken singer who didn’t know what he was doing – he just walked in, in some drunken shit, and they had to keep it up…

“They do seriously believe it! It is,” he concludes, with something uncharacteristically akin to understatement, “interesting.”

Mark E. Smith dies aged 60

Michael Bonner
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Mark E. Smith dies aged 60
Mark E. Smith has died aged 60. The Fall's manager confirmed the news in a statement. "It is with deep regret that we announce the passing of Mark E. Smith. He passed this morning (24th January) at home. A more detailed statement will follow in the next few days. In the meantime, Pam & Mark’s fa...

Mark E. Smith has died aged 60.

The Fall‘s manager confirmed the news in a statement.

“It is with deep regret that we announce the passing of Mark E. Smith. He passed this morning (24th January) at home. A more detailed statement will follow in the next few days. In the meantime, Pam & Mark’s family request privacy at this sad time.

“Pam Vander
The Fall – manager”

The March 2018 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – with My Bloody Valentine and Rock’s 50 Most Extreme Albums on the cover. Elsewhere in the issue, there are new interviews with Joan Baez, Stick In The Wheel, Gary Numan, Jethro Tull and many more and we also look back on the rise of progressive country in 70s’ Austin, Texas. Our free 15 track-CD features 15 classic tracks from the edge of sound, including My Bloody Valentine, Cabaret Voltaire, Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band, Flying Saucer Attack and Mogwai.

Hear Wooden Shjips’ new single, Staring At The Sun

Sam Richards
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Hear Wooden Shjips’ new single, Staring At The Sun
Psych-rock quartet Wooden Shjips have released a new single, entitled "Staring At The Sun". The shimmering eight-minute track was informed by the wildfires that ravaged America's Pacific Northwest last summer. Hear it below: https://open.spotify.com/track/3XtFDis6KnAOopdjnUmI1k Wooden Shjips' fi...

Psych-rock quartet Wooden Shjips have released a new single, entitled “Staring At The Sun”.

The shimmering eight-minute track was informed by the wildfires that ravaged America’s Pacific Northwest last summer. Hear it below:

Wooden Shjips‘ fifth album, aptly titled V, will be released by Thrill Jockey on May 25. The tracklisting is as follows:

1. Eclipse
2. In The Fall
3. Red Line
4. Already Gone
5. Staring At The Sun
6. Golden Flower
7. Ride On

The March 2018 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – with My Bloody Valentine and Rock’s 50 Most Extreme Albums on the cover. Elsewhere in the issue, there are new interviews with Joan Baez, Stick In The Wheel, Gary Numan, Jethro Tull and many more and we also look back on the rise of progressive country in 70s’ Austin, Texas. Our free 15 track-CD features 15 classic tracks from the edge of sound, including My Bloody Valentine, Cabaret Voltaire, Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band, Flying Saucer Attack and Mogwai.

Led Zeppelin to reissue How The West Was Won

Sam Richards
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Led Zeppelin to reissue How The West Was Won
Led Zeppelin's triple live album How The West Was Won - recorded in 1972 and originally released in 2003 - is getting the deluxe reissue treatment. The album will be reissued on multiple formats, including its first appearances on vinyl and Blu-Ray, on March 23. Comprising songs from the band's ...

Led Zeppelin‘s triple live album How The West Was Won – recorded in 1972 and originally released in 2003 – is getting the deluxe reissue treatment.

The album will be reissued on multiple formats, including its first appearances on vinyl and Blu-Ray, on March 23.

Comprising songs from the band’s concerts at Los Angeles Forum and Long Beach Arena in June 1972, How The West Was Won has been completely remastered under the supervision of Jimmy Page.

It will be available on 3xCD, 4xLP, Blu-Ray and digital formats. Additionally, there’s a Super Deluxe edition which includes the album on CD, LP and DVD (Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround and PCM Stereo) formats, plus a high-def download, a book filled with rare and previously unpublished photos of the band, and a high-quality print of the original album cover, the first 30,000 of which will be individually numbered.

Details of additional Led Zeppelin 50th anniversary releases and events will be announced later this year.

The March 2018 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – with My Bloody Valentine and Rock’s 50 Most Extreme Albums on the cover. Elsewhere in the issue, there are new interviews with Joan Baez, Stick In The Wheel, Gary Numan, Jethro Tull and many more and we also look back on the rise of progressive country in 70s’ Austin, Texas. Our free 15 track-CD features 15 classic tracks from the edge of sound, including My Bloody Valentine, Cabaret Voltaire, Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band, Flying Saucer Attack and Mogwai.

Bob Dylan’s “Girl From The North Country” has died

Sam Richards
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Bob Dylan’s “Girl From The North Country” has died
Bob Dylan's high school girlfriend Echo Casey, née Helstrom, has died in California aged 75, according to the Star Tribune. She was believed to be the inspiration for his song "Girl From The North Country", from his breakthrough 1963 album The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. Dylan dated Casey from 1957 to...

Bob Dylan‘s high school girlfriend Echo Casey, née Helstrom, has died in California aged 75, according to the Star Tribune. She was believed to be the inspiration for his song “Girl From The North Country”, from his breakthrough 1963 album The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan.

Dylan dated Casey from 1957 to 1958 when they both attended Hibbing High School in Minnesota. Her independent spirit and love of music left a strong impression on Dylan, who later compared her to Brigitte Bardot in his memoir Chronicles: Volume One.

There remains speculation about the identity of the “Girl From The North Country”, with some believing the song to be about Dylan’s later girlfriends Bonnie Beecher or Suze Rotolo (who appears with him on the cover of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan). However, the lyrics about freezing rivers and winds that “hit heavy on the borderline” would seem to point to northern Minnesota.

Casey lived in Minneapolis for a while before eventually moving to Los Angeles in the 1970s, where she worked as a secretary on movie sets.

“Girl From The North Country” became the title for Conor McPherson‘s Bob Dylan musical, currently showing at London’s Noel Coward Theatre. Tickets are available here.

The March 2018 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – with My Bloody Valentine and Rock’s 50 Most Extreme Albums on the cover. Elsewhere in the issue, there are new interviews with Joan Baez, Stick In The Wheel, Gary Numan, Jethro Tull and many more and we also look back on the rise of progressive country in 70s’ Austin, Texas. Our free 15 track-CD features 15 classic tracks from the edge of sound, including My Bloody Valentine, Cabaret Voltaire, Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band, Flying Saucer Attack and Mogwai.

Introducing The Ultimate Genre Guide: Glam

Michael Bonner
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Introducing The Ultimate Genre Guide: Glam
In the current issue of Uncut, Phil Manzanera looks back at the early days of Roxy Music. Among many things, he considers the slick visual presentation deployed by Roxy around the time of their debut album - cricket jumpers, diamanté-studded fly sunglasses, feather boas and all. "Prog was the anti...

In the current issue of Uncut, Phil Manzanera looks back at the early days of Roxy Music. Among many things, he considers the slick visual presentation deployed by Roxy around the time of their debut album – cricket jumpers, diamanté-studded fly sunglasses, feather boas and all.

“Prog was the antithesis of showing off and dressing up,” he explains. “Getting to 1972, there was that period when all that came to 
a grinding end because of drugs – heroin killed everything, and everything became grey. And there was no showbiz element, which there had been with Tamla Motown and The Beatles, so with Bowie and with us it was going into colour and being flamboyant and having fun, but with some decent music. We never thought we were glam rock. Marc Bolan and Bowie had started quite a few years earlier and had been trying to find their thing; we came out of nowhere with an already-formed thing.”

It’s a useful, insider take on the context around which Roxy, Bowie, Bolan and many more besides evolved during the early Seventies, where “being flamboyant and having fun” seemed as critical to the creative process as it did a reaction against the more studied, unapologetic complexities of prog. Roxy’s splendid debut album is about to be released as a super deluxe box set – and, by timely coincidence, Uncut celebrates glam rock in the first of our new series, The Ultimate Genre Guide, which goes on sale this Thursday in the UK and is available to pre-order from our online store.

Here’s John Robinson, who edited this one, to explain more…

“As you will discover when you read this stomping new publication, there were many ways to be glam. Conceptual, like Roxy or Bowie. Flashy, and made for colour television, like Slade. Theatrical, like Alice Cooper, or chaotic like the New York Dolls. For our cover star Marc Bolan it was the fulfilment of childhood dreams of stardom – and fuel for the dreams of others.

“Perhaps more than anything else, it could be a key to reinvention and self-discovery. Roy Wood was a joint-passing hippy before he became the glitter-bearded star of Wizzard. Mott The Hoople were longtime triers about to quit, given another shot when they performed Bowie’s ‘All The Young Dudes’ – essentially glam’s national anthem. Elton John began the 1970s as an earnest balladeer, and was possibly more a glam rocker from expediency than anything else. Still, it allowed him to access elements of his showmanship, sexuality and general high spirits than he had previously managed.

“As the 1974 meeting with NME’s Charles Shaar Murray included here makes plain, Elton in some ways embodies glam’s improbable hotline connection between pure showbusiness and the man in the street. Having once changed his birth name from Reginald Dwight, he tells Murray that he’s now giving thought to a new middle name: Hercules (although he ‘could have called myself Fiona, I suppose. Elton Fiona John. Or Dalmatian.’) Stephen Dalton’s commentary details not only Elton’s glam recordings but also recounts several gossipy years of cattiness and fallings-out.

“There was no one way to be glam. There were some recognisable features – the intersection of ambiguous sexuality and hard, often 1950s-inspired rock; an emphasis on performance, posing and showmanship; great singles – but this was no straitjacket.

“Some artists – like Lou Reed or Iggy Pop – drifted into glam, took what they wanted and moved on. The lesser talents had their brief moment basking in its reflective glow. All round, it offered freedom, not confinement. (Unless you were The Sweet, of course – for whom the whole experience turned into a struggle for independence from their production team.)

“As David Cavanagh points out here in his writing about glam singles, not everyone could be as talented as David Bowie. Glam offered both the sublime and the ridiculous, whether that was the stellar run of albums Bowie made between 1970 and 1974, or a one-off exploitation single by one-hit wonders we’d now find filed under ‘junk shop glam’.

“You can read about all versions of the glam experience here, in a range of hilarious archive features – just who were Hair, Nose & Teeth? – and insightful new commentary. There are thoughts on glam film, glam art and glam’s legacy. You’ll read how our artists – from Bowie, Bolan and Slade through to Queen and Sparks (by 2018, glam’s only real survivors) – made, and were remade, by glam rock.

“So catch a bright star and place it on your forehead… and there you go.”

The March 2018 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – with My Bloody Valentine and Rock’s 50 Most Extreme Albums on the cover. Elsewhere in the issue, there are new interviews with Joan Baez, Stick In The Wheel, Gary Numan, Jethro Tull and many more and we also look back on the rise of progressive country in 70s’ Austin, Texas. Our free 15 track-CD features 15 classic tracks from the edge of sound, including My Bloody Valentine, Cabaret Voltaire, Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band, Flying Saucer Attack and Mogwai.

Hear Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s new song, American Guilt

Sam Richards
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Hear Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s new song, American Guilt
New Zealand psych-funk-rockers Unknown Mortal Orchestra have released a new single. Hear "American Guilt" below: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFFa440Mo0I As part of a lengthy world tour, the band have announced four UK dates in May: May 24 - London, Roundhouse May 25 - Bristol, SWX May 26 - ...

New Zealand psych-funk-rockers Unknown Mortal Orchestra have released a new single. Hear “American Guilt” below:

As part of a lengthy world tour, the band have announced four UK dates in May:

May 24 – London, Roundhouse
May 25 – Bristol, SWX
May 26 – Manchester, Strange Waves festival
May 27 – Leeds, World Island festival

Tickets go on sale on Friday January 26 via the band’s own site.

The March 2018 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – with My Bloody Valentine and Rock’s 50 Most Extreme Albums on the cover. Elsewhere in the issue, there are new interviews with Joan Baez, Stick In The Wheel, Gary Numan, Jethro Tull and many more and we also look back on the rise of progressive country in 70s’ Austin, Texas. Our free 15 track-CD features 15 classic tracks from the edge of sound, including My Bloody Valentine, Cabaret Voltaire, Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band, Flying Saucer Attack and Mogwai.

Hear the new single by Julian Casablancas & The Voidz

Sam Richards
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Hear the new single by Julian Casablancas & The Voidz
The Strokes' frontman Julian Casablancas has released a new single with his other band, The Voidz. Hear "Leave It In My Dreams" below: https://open.spotify.com/album/68AD3dLFUewEL8Tym17gqS Now simply called The Voidz (as opposed to Julian Casablancas & The Voidz), the band are readying the fol...

The Strokes‘ frontman Julian Casablancas has released a new single with his other band, The Voidz. Hear “Leave It In My Dreams” below:

Now simply called The Voidz (as opposed to Julian Casablancas & The Voidz), the band are readying the follow-up to their 2014 album Tyranny. Watch a droll, B-movie-style trailer for the album below:

The March 2018 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – with My Bloody Valentine and Rock’s 50 Most Extreme Albums on the cover. Elsewhere in the issue, there are new interviews with Joan Baez, Stick In The Wheel, Gary Numan, Jethro Tull and many more and we also look back on the rise of progressive country in 70s’ Austin, Texas. Our free 15 track-CD features 15 classic tracks from the edge of sound, including My Bloody Valentine, Cabaret Voltaire, Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band, Flying Saucer Attack and Mogwai.

Hugh Masekela dies aged 78

Sam Richards
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Hugh Masekela dies aged 78
South African jazz trumpeter and prominent anti-apartheid campaigner Hugh Masekela has died aged 78. He passed away peacefully in Johannesburg after a long battle with prostate cancer. Masekela rose to global prominence in the late 60s with the hits "Up, Up And Away" and "Grazing In The Grass", pe...

South African jazz trumpeter and prominent anti-apartheid campaigner Hugh Masekela has died aged 78.

He passed away peacefully in Johannesburg after a long battle with prostate cancer.

Masekela rose to global prominence in the late 60s with the hits “Up, Up And Away” and “Grazing In The Grass”, performing at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival and guesting with The Byrds and Paul Simon.

Written during a long period of exile from his homeland, his 1977 song “Soweto Blues” (sung by his former wife Miriam Makeba) became an anthem of the struggle against apartheid, as did 1987’s “Bring Him Back Home”, written for Nelson Mandela.

Masekela was hailed by current South African President Jacob Zuma, who said: “His contribution to the struggle for liberation will never be forgotten.”

The March 2018 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – with My Bloody Valentine and Rock’s 50 Most Extreme Albums on the cover. Elsewhere in the issue, there are new interviews with Joan Baez, Stick In The Wheel, Gary Numan, Jethro Tull and many more and we also look back on the rise of progressive country in 70s’ Austin, Texas. Our free 15 track-CD features 15 classic tracks from the edge of sound, including My Bloody Valentine, Cabaret Voltaire, Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band, Flying Saucer Attack and Mogwai.

The Durutti Column – The Guitar And Other Machines

Stephen Troussé
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The Durutti Column – The Guitar And Other Machines
“Vini Reilly, by the way, is way overdue a revival,” says God, appearing to Tony Wilson in a hash-haze vision towards the end of 24 Hour Party People. “You might want to think about a greatest hits.” It’s played for laughs, but there’s an important truth here: in many ways, Wilson’s pe...

“Vini Reilly, by the way, is way overdue a revival,” says God, appearing to Tony Wilson in a hash-haze vision towards the end of 24 Hour Party People. “You might want to think about a greatest hits.” It’s played for laughs, but there’s an important truth here: in many ways, Wilson’s persistent attempts to usher the guitarist into the spotlight of popular acclaim was the secret driver of the whole quixotic Factory escapade.

The Factory club was first founded in 1978, after all, expressly to promote the “neo-psychedelia” of the Column’s first misfiring incarnation, and Factory Records formed in 1979 to release the group’s music (the fledgling Joy Division at this time being almost an afterthought). You could even see Factory Classical, one of the most noble fiascos of the entire enterprise, as an attempt to conjure a context for Reilly’s quasi-classical meanderings – notably Without Mercy (1984), part of Wilson’s campaign to cultivate Reilly as Withington’s answer to Bohuslav Martinů.

1985 seemed to mark another change of tack, with Wilson stuffing Reilly’s Christmas stocking with sequencers and electronic paraphernalia. Although it was never expressly stated, you get the feeling that Wilson might have been pushing Reilly towards soundtrack work. And it’s maybe not that great a stretch to think of a possible world where Reilly developed as a kind of post-punk Mark Knopfler, plangently scoring wistful widescreen accounts of post-industrial decay.

On 1986’s Circuses And Bread, with tracks like “Dance 1”, Reilly was evidently still getting to grips with the technology (Melody Maker compared it to testcard music), but for The Guitar And Other Machines (Nov 1987), things were falling into place. Producer Stephen Street was brought in (paving the way for Reilly’s crucial role on Morrissey’s Viva Hate), and synthetic elements were grafted into the Durutti soundworld more seamlessly.

“Arpeggiator” is a stunningly bold statement of intent – it’s like the hitherto frail, musical Durutti corpus has been augmented into some six-million-dollar bionic body. Longtime Durutti Columnist John Metcalfe’s viola, plucked and bowed, swoops over a scintillating torrent of synths, before the track erupts into powerchords and molten lead guitar.

“What Is It To Me (Woman)” is a more characteristic Durutti excursion, but played out on a wider screen, the decaying reverbed guitar lines intertwined with desolate piano and washed over with wailing harmonica. Wilson had often despaired of Reilly’s reluctance to spend more than a couple of days in the studio, but Stephen Street seems to have persuaded him of the virtues of a more diligent approach – it’s like the home movies or chamber pieces of the early albums have suddenly been recast in cinemascope. “Red Shoes”, then, is an appropriate title, conjuring associations with Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s Technicolor fantasia. Sensing the way the marketplace was changing, Factory ensured …Other Machines was the first LP to be released on DAT – Wilson once again vainly trying to steer the nascent yuppie audiophile market away from Brothers In Arms to more esoteric in-car entertainments.

This exemplary reissue augments the original LP with a number of fugitive pieces from the Durutti discography: notably the “Greetings Three” EP, originally released in Italy in 1986, plus a handful of tracks cut in LA and released as the “City Of Our Lady” EP in August ’87 – remarkable for a barmy cover of “White Rabbit”.

The third disc, meanwhile, unearths a live recording from the conclusion of the US tour, at the Bottom Line club in New York, previously available only on cassette. It’s hard to say the live set adds much to the studio incarnation of the …Other Machines material – “Arpeggiator” feels like it’s been diminished from IMAX to church hall, an undoubtedly sublime guitarist playing along with some MIDI backing tracks. It’s only on tracks like “Jacqueline”, where Reilly really locks into a groove with drummer Bruce Mitchell, that the music comes alive and you sense the magic that still eludes the machines.

Q&A
Bruce Mitchell, Durutti Column drummer 
and manager
Did Vini listen to the album again for this reissue?
Vini doesn’t really listen to his old stuff now. He likes the artefacts, though, the finished products. He puts them on his wall.

A lot of the album feels like it might be auditioning for soundtracks – was that a conscious intention?
Vini has only ever made music for himself. Tony Wilson always thought the music would come to film, but it’s only in the last couple of years that it has started showing up on soundtracks [and on Jerry Maguire, 1996].

It was sad to hear about Vini’s ongoing health problems – how’s he doing now?
He’s going to be playing in March. After the strokes it was hard for him. We bought him a special instrument with a narrow neck, but when we went to see him he had his old Strat set up and was roaring away! He frequently rediscovers his mojo. We’ve got an LP all ready to be released, but he’s having a bit of a dispute with the producer. Vini has his ups and downs, you know, but he’s still functioning in his unique way. STEPHEN TROUSSÉ

The March 2018 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – with My Bloody Valentine and Rock’s 50 Most Extreme Albums on the cover. Elsewhere in the issue, there are new interviews with Joan Baez, Stick In The Wheel, Gary Numan, Jethro Tull and many more and we also look back on the rise of progressive country in 70s’ Austin, Texas. Our free 15 track-CD features 15 classic tracks from the edge of sound, including My Bloody Valentine, Cabaret Voltaire, Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band, Flying Saucer Attack and Mogwai.

Tune-Yards – I Can Feel You Creep Into My Private Life

Sharon O'Connell
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Tune-Yards – I Can Feel You Creep Into My Private Life
In a piece Merrill Garbus wrote for Talkhouse in 2013, about her trip to Haiti to take drumming lessons plus folkloric and contemporary dance classes, there’s an aside that speaks not only to Nikki Nack, her album of the following year, but also to a clear future path. “I am not a dancer so much...

In a piece Merrill Garbus wrote for Talkhouse in 2013, about her trip to Haiti to take drumming lessons plus folkloric and contemporary dance classes, there’s an aside that speaks not only to Nikki Nack, her album of the following year, but also to a clear future path. “I am not a dancer so much,” she admits, “but these days I will dance harder than I ever have in my whole life.” What was then a simple commitment to participate fully in that programme (despite some reluctance), now reads like a passionate affirmation of her belief in dance music as a connecting life force.

Rhythm is certainly the core strength of I Can Feel You Creep Into My Private Life, on which jazz-schooled bass player and long-term collaborator Nate Brenner becomes Tune-Yards’ official other half. But it’s hardly as if Garbus has ever been a slouch in that department. With 2011’s Whokill, she shifted away from her debut’s lo-fi, DIY mix of ukulele, percussion, vocals and snatches of field recordings to something more insistent, with a strong undertow of idiosyncratic funk – a result of her exploration of non-Western beat patterns, especially African polyrhythms and a non-reliance on the down beat. Songs like “Gangsta” especially, chimed with the pop of peers Vampire Weekend, but there was nothing collegiate about Tune-Yards; their rhythmic interests ran to gently skronking wyrd folk (on “Wooly Wolly Gong”) and math-jazz (“Riotriot”), while following Afro-pop’s source. It was 2014’s Nikki Nack, though, that underscored not only the eccentricity of their art, but also its flexibility and futurist spirit.

Now, Tune-Yards’ fourth, which embraces the broad, even populist notion of “electronic dance music” while perversely pushing them further than they’ve pushed themselves before. It’s a big, bold, entertainingly disruptive blast of a record with a mirror-ball lure, refracting everything from Motown to early ’80s disco and funk, boom bap, ’90s piano house and contemporary R&B (to which Garbus’s powerful, multi-tasking voice is brilliantly suited), which loses none of their oddness or playfulness, but puts issues such as race and cultural identity, privilege, intersectional feminism and looming ecological disaster under the lyrical spotlight.

Explaining the prime motivation of I Can Feel You Creep Into My Private Life, Garbus told Uncut: “I was fascinated by my own snobbery about four-on-the-floor dance tunes. I didn’t feel comfortable actively disliking a whole genre of music, so I set out to learn about where ‘EDM’ came from: its history, roots. I’ve always loved making music people can dance to and I’ve also wanted to complicate pop music, rhythmically, melodically, lyrically, thematically. I wanted to see if we could make dance music with electronic elements that still felt in line with what Tune-Yards had done before.”

All those boxes are ticked, when you consider songs picked even at random. Soaring first single “Look At Your Hands” for instance, whose super-charged clatter and delirious, “la-la-la-la-la-la” beat punctuation suggests Michael Jackson’s “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’” reconfigured around bass music’s DNA – but with power/lessness and inherited agency on its mind. Or “Colonizer”, where Garbus’s light, sing-song tone (“I use my white woman’s voice to tell stories of travels with African men/I comb my white woman’s hair with a comb made especially, generally for me”) contrasts with chip-tune chattering, a distorted bass frequency and pitch-shifted choral ululations. In contrast are “Honesty” (a Technicolor, sax-strafed update of William Onyeabor’s psychedelic funk), “Coast To Coast” – driving, blues/soul pop with a keys nod to Talk Talk, of all people, and an apocalyptic theme (“see you in the middle, when the walls come tumbling down to the sea”) – and the album’s wild card, the soulful and dreamy “Who Are You”. Here, Garbus’s voice seems to be drifting across constellations in search of connection like a satellite signal on the blink, while a saxophone flutters around her. Tune-Yards sign off with the effects-heavy “Free”, whose Nina Simone-ish supplication soars above a shuddering beat pattern before being silenced by a backwards noise loop.

The final sound on the record is Garbus counting out a beat, with sticks, for (presumably) Brenner and laughing as she throws back to opening track “Heart Attack”. It’s a neat, full-circle closer – and also a reminder not only that the beat goes on, but also of Tune-Yards’ enduring commitment to its primacy. SHARON O’CONNELL

Q&A
Merrill Garbus
What determined your approach to this LP?
I was disturbed by aspects of our previous tour cycle. So much of Tune-Yards music is directly influenced by black music: folk and pop music from all over Africa, hip hop, funk, rock, soul, blues… and I felt a real disconnect between our mostly white audiences and any real kind of examination of ourselves, of our whiteness, of our relationship to this music… I wondered if I was being explicit enough about my discomfort with our complicity in this system. I felt the weight of the Elvis legacy, I suppose – being a white performer filtering black music through a white experience and selling a “white-washed” product to mostly white people. I wanted to disrupt that, or to see if I even could disrupt that.

Which elements of ’80s music do you love most?
I appreciate some of those early drum machine-based songs, where there’s not the kind of hi-fi beats we have now, where everything sounds crisp and perfect. It was a lot of information jammed into a sample, a drum loop, whatever… crunchy, rough around the edges, sometimes kind of thin, sometimes totally blown out. I also loved those late-‘80s dance anthems where just one word gets chanted. As much as I don’t like to live in the past, the ’80s pulls me back all the time. It gets a bad rap for cheese.
INTERVIEW: SHARON O’CONNELL

The March 2018 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – with My Bloody Valentine and Rock’s 50 Most Extreme Albums on the cover. Elsewhere in the issue, there are new interviews with Joan Baez, Stick In The Wheel, Gary Numan, Jethro Tull and many more and we also look back on the rise of progressive country in 70s’ Austin, Texas. Our free 15 track-CD features 15 classic tracks from the edge of sound, including My Bloody Valentine, Cabaret Voltaire, Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band, Flying Saucer Attack and Mogwai.

Five John Fogerty solo albums primed for reissue

Sam Richards
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Five John Fogerty solo albums primed for reissue
This year marks the 20th anniversary of John Fogerty's Grammy award for his album Blue Moon Swamp. To celebrate, it's getting a deluxe reissue along with four of the Credence Clearwater Revival frontman's other solo albums. 1997's Blue Moon Swamp will be reissued on April 27 along with Premonition ...

This year marks the 20th anniversary of John Fogerty‘s Grammy award for his album Blue Moon Swamp. To celebrate, it’s getting a deluxe reissue along with four of the Credence Clearwater Revival frontman’s other solo albums.

1997’s Blue Moon Swamp will be reissued on April 27 along with Premonition (1998) and Centerfield (1985), with Eye Of The Zombie (1986) and Deja Vu (All Over Again) (2004) following on May 25.

All albums will be released in 180g vinyl, CD and digital editions. You can pre-order Blue Moon Swamp here.

Fogerty is currently putting the finishing touches to a new album slated for release later this year.

The March 2018 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – with My Bloody Valentine and Rock’s 50 Most Extreme Albums on the cover. Elsewhere in the issue, there are new interviews with Joan Baez, Stick In The Wheel, Gary Numan, Jethro Tull and many more and we also look back on the rise of progressive country in 70s’ Austin, Texas. Our free 15 track-CD features 15 classic tracks from the edge of sound, including My Bloody Valentine, Cabaret Voltaire, Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band, Flying Saucer Attack and Mogwai.

Three members of The Smiths reunite for orchestral gigs

Sam Richards
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Three members of The Smiths reunite for orchestral gigs
With a full Smiths reunion seemingly more distant than ever, three former members - bassist Andy Rourke, drummer Mike Joyce and fleeting second guitarist Craig Gannon – are teaming up with Manchester Camerata orchestra for a series of concerts this summer under the banner 'Classically Smiths'. Ma...

With a full Smiths reunion seemingly more distant than ever, three former members – bassist Andy Rourke, drummer Mike Joyce and fleeting second guitarist Craig Gannon – are teaming up with Manchester Camerata orchestra for a series of concerts this summer under the banner ‘Classically Smiths‘.

Manchester Camerata previously provided the orchestral oomph for the Haçienda Classical concerts and played on New Order‘s Music Complete.

Smiths songs due to be orchestrally reimagined for the shows include Hand in Glove, How Soon is Now?, There is a Light That Never Goes Out, The Boy With The Thorn In His Side, Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want, Shoplifters Of The World Unite, Girlfriend In A Coma and Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me.

Guest vocalists have yet to be revealed.

Three Classically Smiths concerts have been announced so far, with more to be unveiled soon:

June 28 – Manchester O2 Academy
June 29 – London O2 Academy, Brixton
July 2 – Edinburgh Usher Hall

Tickets will be available here from January 26.

UPDATE: Andy Rourke has since denied involvement in the Classically Smiths project.

UPDATE: The Classically Smiths concerts have now been cancelled.

The March 2018 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – with My Bloody Valentine and Rock’s 50 Most Extreme Albums on the cover. Elsewhere in the issue, there are new interviews with Joan Baez, Stick In The Wheel, Gary Numan, Jethro Tull and many more and we also look back on the rise of progressive country in 70s’ Austin, Texas. Our free 15 track-CD features 15 classic tracks from the edge of sound, including My Bloody Valentine, Cabaret Voltaire, Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band, Flying Saucer Attack and Mogwai.

Tom Waits to reissue first seven albums in March

Sam Richards
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Tom Waits to reissue first seven albums in March
Tom Waits' first seven albums, originally released on Elektra/Asylum from 1973-80, will be remastered and reissued by Anti- in March. They will be available on streaming platforms from March 9 with CD releases to follow on March 23 and 180g vinyl editions staggered throughout the year. The full li...

Tom Waits‘ first seven albums, originally released on Elektra/Asylum from 1973-80, will be remastered and reissued by Anti- in March.

They will be available on streaming platforms from March 9 with CD releases to follow on March 23 and 180g vinyl editions staggered throughout the year.

The full list of albums to be reissued is as follows:

Closing Time (1973)
The Heart Of Saturday Night (1974)
Nighthawks At The Diner (1975)
Small Change (1976)
Foreign Affairs (1977)
Blue Valentine (1978)
Heartattack And Vine (1980)

You can pre-order the CDs and the Closing Time vinyl here.

The March 2018 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – with My Bloody Valentine and Rock’s 50 Most Extreme Albums on the cover. Elsewhere in the issue, there are new interviews with Joan Baez, Stick In The Wheel, Gary Numan, Jethro Tull and many more and we also look back on the rise of progressive country in 70s’ Austin, Texas. Our free 15 track-CD features 15 classic tracks from the edge of sound, including My Bloody Valentine, Cabaret Voltaire, Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band, Flying Saucer Attack and Mogwai.

Nick Drake remembered: “My first impression was that he was a genius – it was that simple”

John Robinson
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Nick Drake remembered: “My first impression was that he was a genius – it was that simple”
His soft voice, withdrawn nature and short life have given rise to a myth of NICK DRAKE as a tragic figure. In fact, this was a man with a robust musical identity, and a far-reaching plan for his songs. Forty years after his death, his producers JOE BOYD and JOHN WOOD, and contemporaries including R...

Nearly a year later, John Wood answered the telephone to Nick Drake. Drake would occasionally drop in to visit John and Beverley Martyn at their new home in Hastings, on the Sussex coast, and visit Wood and his family at their home in Suffolk, but otherwise, his movements were sketchy. Wood hadn’t heard from him, he remembers, for “a long time”, but when the pair spoke, it appeared that Drake’s appetite for recording was undiminished.

“He said, ‘I’m ready to go back in the studio. When can I come in and record?’” says Wood. Sound Techniques remained a busy studio, but something about Drake’s increasingly mercurial nature motivated Wood to suggest he came in as soon as possible.

“He was off the radar a bit,” says Wood, “so I thought maybe I shouldn’t hang about. The only time we could get was in the middle of the night. I just felt he wanted to get on with it quickly. There wasn’t any messing about – he knew exactly what he wanted to do.”

What was recorded over those two evenings became 1972’s 28-minute Pink Moon. “The first or second thing we put down was ‘Parasite’,” says Wood. “But at that point I’m not sure if I knew what was going on. I remember saying, ‘Do you want Danny to come in?’ and he just said, ‘No, I don’t want anyone else on it.’”

Among the material Drake recorded was a song whose complex minor-chording creates a sense of stillness, while describing a world of unrelenting motion. It sounded of a piece with material from Five Leaves Left. This, finally, was “Things Behind The Sun” – “that song”, the song that Drake had played as an encore at the Royal Festival Hall two years earlier.

“One of the interesting things about Nick,” says John Wood, “is that he pretty much always knew what he was going to do with everything.”

In the title track, Robin Frederick hears a musical statement of Nick Drake’s personal condition. “When he goes down to that low note, it’s too low for him to sing,” she says. “He could easily have put it up a step and sung it that way, but he wanted it like that. I trust the choices he made. That low note is basically saying,  ‘I can’t get any lower – this is too low for me.’”

Pink Moon was Drake’s final album. He died on November 25, 1974.

It was around 1978, thinks Joe Boyd, when they started turning up at his house. “Kids from Ohio, with backpacks. ‘You knew Nick Drake? Please tell me about him.’ How they knew where I lived, I don’t know, but I got people knocking at my door.”

Once the manager/producer of a struggling songwriter, since Nick Drake’s death Boyd has been cast by some as custodian of Drake’s fortunes in life – implicitly saying that if different decisions had been made about his music, the outcome of his life would have somehow been different.

“There is a school of thought which says Nick Drake is at his best at his purest, ie Pink Moon, and all the rest is just Joe Boyd imposing something on Nick,” says Boyd. “But I would say to them: that was what he wanted. The only time he performed in Cambridge was with a string quartet. Before I even met Nick, he was working with Robert.

“I hear from people who ask, ‘When are you going to put out the version of Five Leaves Left or Bryter Layter with just Nick’s voice and guitar?’ And I write them a polite note saying, basically, fuck off. Explaining that it’s recorded live in the studio… The only way you get ‘River Man’ to sound like that is to put Nick in the middle of the strings – you can’t get an album of just Nick and guitar because the strings are all over the voice track.”

In their son’s final months, Boyd also retained the confidence of Nick Drake’s parents, who asked him to call and reassure Nick that he wouldn’t think less of him if he took antidepressants. Beyond that, Boyd has looked after Drake by making sure his records have remained available in perpetuity.

“I knew Chris Blackwell would always support Nick,” Boyd remembers, “but I said ‘Who knows, you might get run over by a bus tomorrow. I want it in the contract that his records don’t go out of print.’” I had the feeling that one day people would get it, but not if the records had been allowed to disappear.”

When they arrived at Boyd’s door, these kids from Ohio generally told Joe the same story.

“Both boys and girls would tell it,” says Boyd. “‘I started going out with this person, it was early in the relationship and it was starting to get serious. They said, “Do you know Nick Drake?” I said, “No. Who’s Nick Drake?” and they said: “Sit down…”

“‘And they put this record on, and something became clear to me that if I didn’t take this seriously, then the relationship didn’t have a chance.’”

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